Quick-reference: Top guest complaints for hotels and holiday parksIf you don’t have time to read the full article, here are the top things that hospitality guests complain about, based on 1,000 real guest messages with negative sentiment:
The data is based on 10,000+ conversation summaries from 1,000+ European properties that took place between March 2025 and February 2026. |
Ask most hospitality businesses what their guests complain about most and you'll hear things like room size, noise, or breakfast quality. While these types of complaints may pop up in reviews, when we analyzed 1,000 negative-sentiment real guest messages, we saw that other issues actually topped the list.
In fact, the most common complaints in 2026 had little to do with the physical experience, and more so to do with the digital touchpoints that failed. And even when there was an issue with the room or property, fast, digital communication can go a long way in bringing the guest’s sentiment from negative to positive.
In this article, we walk through the five most common complaints and issues that guests have, based on a subset of 1,000 negative-sentiment messages from the total 10,000 conversations dataset.
If you want to dive deeper into the research, access the full 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality report.
See more detail on the research methodology at the end of the article.
Paying for a hotel or holiday park stay should be quick and easy, but our analysis showed that billing-related issues feature in 9.2% of the 1,000 negative-sentiment messages. These issues happen both online and on-site, with credit card payment failures, missing payment links, and confusing deposit charges being the main culprits.
Often, such issues also create extra work for front desk staff too. As a guest’s message to a German hotel shows: “The online portal won't allow credit card payment. Can we pay on-site instead?”
What this means for your property
Payment issues are relatively simple to fix by choosing a payment service provider that has high reliability and self-service options, and monitoring your guest workflows to ensure payment deadlines and links are secure and working as normal.
While check-in is a key moment in every single hospitality stay, broken check-in links and property access issues appeared in 7.5% of the messages we analyzed. Guests who can't easily complete digital check-ins tend to arrive at your property already frustrated. Plus, it results in extra messages for your front desk to handle.
Messages exactly like this one from a hotel guest in the UK: “I'm trying to click the check-in link from the email and it won't let me.”
What this means for your property
Properties can get on top of this issue by designing (and testing) messaging workflows that provide a working check-in link—often provided by an integration in your PMS—and accurate details about what guests should do when they arrive. Whenever something changes, such as the access code being updated, the workflow should be immediately updated.
Confirmation emails are usually the first interaction between a property and a guest, and are sent within a few minutes of the guest making a reservation. Yet, over 65 conversations in our dataset started with a guest unsure whether their booking even existed, and sending a message like: “I just made a reservation but haven't received any confirmation. Did the booking go through?”
This starts the guest’s experience off on the wrong foot and creates extra workload for front office staff to deal with. And if the guest doesn’t receive a response fast enough, they’re likely to reach out on another channel, resulting in even more messages for staff to wade through.
What this means for your property
Guests expect instant confirmation for their bookings, so ensure that your booking workflows include an automated, instant message with the guest’s reservation details sent via WhatsApp, email, SMS or OTA inboxes. And if you’re wondering which channel tends to be most effective, WhatsApp has an open rate of 98% and engages up to 80% of guests compared to 25% engagement of email.
From time to time, there’ll be issues with amenities or equipment within your units. This can impact any property type but appears most often for holiday parks and other self-catering accommodation, with messages like, “The dishwasher won't start. Could someone come by? House 622.” popping up quite often.
Hardly a surprise when our analysis showed that nearly 24% of the 4,301 conversations from holiday parks (including positive-sentiment messages) related to equipment, facilities, appliances or towels and linen.
What this means for your property
When an appliance is broken on arrival or breaks down during a stay, the guest’s experience starts badly. That means properties need to have fast, self-service options in place for guests to report issues, as well as the capability to quickly respond to the guest and actually resolve the issue. Automated messaging on the channels guests already use, like WhatsApp, can help hugely with this.
It’s easy to think that cancellation-related issues are less important since it means that the guest isn’t going to complete their stay, however they’re way more likely to reschedule their stay if the cancellation and rebooking experience is smooth and hassle-free.
Reasons for cancellation can range from unforeseen circumstances like illness to simple mistakes like selecting the wrong dates or number of guests, such as this message from our dataset: “I need assistance cancelling and rebooking. I booked today but meant to book for a different time frame.”
What this means for your property
Cancelling a stay and more importantly, rebooking for alternative dates, should be straightforward and easy for the guests to arrange themselves. Make sure your cancellation terms are easy to find (i.e. not just in the fine print), and give guests a self-serve option to amend their booking. For more complex situations, ensure your front desk staff have the guests’ details and conversation history on all channels to hand, so they can handle the issue with care.
Despite 1,000 messages from the 10,000+ conversations we analyzed having a negative sentiment, the five issues we’ve outlined in this article are likely even more common, as our dataset didn't include instances where the guest went directly to the front desk on-site.
Most of the issues are preventable by having clear policies, smooth integrations between your systems (e.g. payment service and your PMS), and messaging guests with info about their stay. However, things can always go wrong, so it’s important that you can handle guest issues and complaints in a quick and friendly manner.
Automated guest messaging is one of the most effective ways to get ahead of these issues before they become complaints. Proactive messaging like sending check-in instructions before arrival removes most of the uncertainty that drives guests to reach out in the first place. When something does go wrong, an AI virtual concierge, combined with your front desk, can respond quickly and ensure the issue is promptly resolved.
Ready to automate guest communications at your hotel, holiday park, hostel, or other accommodation? Test Runnr.ai on WhatsApp now or book a demo—no strings attached. Ask questions you commonly hear from guests to see how our AI can help improve guest experience at your accommodation.
This blog is based on chapter four of the 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality report. As part of this report, Runnr.ai analyzed over 10,000 guest conversations in eight different languages across 1,000 hotels, holiday parks, and hostels across Europe. All guest responses and property names were anonymized.
The conversations took place between March 2025 and February 2026 on WhatsApp, Email, SMS, OTA inboxes (e.g. Booking.com inbox), and webchat. Positive, neutral, and negative sentiment messages were included to ensure the results showed the full picture, and 1.23 million button clicks were recorded to help capture guest intent as well as what they actually said in messages.